


Bottom of this Blue Ocean

by celestialskiff



Category: Gay Pirates (song)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/pseuds/celestialskiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd always wanted to be a chef.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bottom of this Blue Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinky_kneazle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinky_kneazle/gifts).



> Intended for Yuletide madness, but ended up long enough to be a story. Written at high speed on Christmas morning. Hope it's OK!

He'd always wanted to be a chef.

He'd always wanted to be a chef, since he was a boy living on the coast with his family. They'd never had much to eat, and what they had was usually fish boiled in seawater, but he'd always been obsessed with food. With the thought of food—with the dream of pheasant on the table, with the fantasy of stolen cherries, with the forbidden packages of dark, expensive spices.

And now he was on a ship, and in love.

Falling in love was easier to understand than being on a ship. He'd fallen in love with Sebastian's wrists first, Sebastian's wrists as they strained against the weight of cargo on the dock at King's Lynn, and then with Sebastian's throat and the shape of his face in the grey February light.

He'd been working in an inn, making fish paste. He could move away from home—as far as King's Lynn! At least ten miles!—but he would always gut fish. His hands would always smell salty, and there'd always be little bones underneath his nails. He would escape when he could, to the dock, and look at the sailors. He wasn't sure why. Some of them just gave him a funny feeling in his knees and at the back of his throat, and, yes, in his groin, and he couldn't stop himself from looking. He looked, and one day he saw Sebastian.

Sebastian saw him too. He said something to the man on his left, and the man cuffed him in the shoulder, and Sebastian grinned, and then he came over.

“What's the best thing you've ever eaten?” Sebastian said.

“Gingerbread,” he, Tom, said at once. You never got gingerbread if you were the sort of boy who grew up on fish cooked in seawater, and not much of that, either, but he'd had it once, the dense, rich cake, tasting so spicy and so strong.

Sebastian laughed. “I've had an orange,” he said. “We were in Porto, last. And I had an orange.”

Tom didn't know what to say to that. “I'd like an orange,” he said at last. He'd never had one, but he could picture them, because he'd heard about them before, often, from sailors. They were magical. Bright fruit the size of his head, dripping in juice that would run to his elbows.

Sebastian stole them a handful of dates from a crate on the dock. Dates were expensive too: Tom had only had them once. Sebastian tore little pieces off them and gave them to him. They were sweet and spicy, and they came from Sebastian's fingers. Later Sebastian kissed his neck, and then his mouth, and Tom was gone. Tom was always Sebastian's after that, if Sebastian wanted him.

So falling in love was easy. Ending up on a ship was harder. Tom wasn't that keen on the sea—dark and endless and treacherous—and he certainly didn't want to be stuck in a boat on top it for the rest of his days. But the fish paste season ended and Sebastian and the boat were going to Spain, and Sebastian said, “But why not?” and they needed an extra pair of hands anyway.

He'd always wanted to be a chef. He'd grown up with the sea in his nose, with the taste of the sea in his mouth, with the sea in everything, but he couldn't swim to save his life. He'd always wanted to be chef since he'd heard of the profession, since he learnt you could spend all day around food, with your fingers in the bowls, mixing and tasting and frying and smelling, and he couldn't believe such paradise existed.

Anyway, he wasn't a chef, never had been, really, and he couldn't swim, and the sea was dark and deep and endless.

Good thing he wasn't going to fall in.

He kept to the centre of the ship and didn't look at the edges and did what he was told. No one else seemed to fall in the sea either, and he came almost to like the ship. People smiled at him, and there was more food than there'd ever be in the cottage by the sea with six siblings pinching fish bones from him, and Sebastian was there. They always managed to find each other in the end, at night, when the air was cold and taut around them and Sebastian's mouth was the warmest thing in the world. They melted in to one another on the hammock, and Sebastian said, “Be quiet, be quiet. No one will know as long as you're quiet,” and Tom believed him.

Sebastian brought him to the edge of the ship—to the edge of the world—and they looked over at the turning waves. Tom hated it, but Sebastian was warm next to him, and he kept looking.

“I found you on the dock,” Tom said, “And now I'm here.”

“No, I found you,” Sebastian said, and he put his hand on Tom's neck, on the soft, thin skin there, and stroked it gently. “Can't believe no one had found you before, and you so handsome.”

Tom had never seen his reflection in anything more accurate than a rock pool, so he didn't know if this was true or not. He turned his head, looking at Sebastian's face in the dark. He was Tom, at home, lying between two brothers and dreaming of autumn mushrooms. He was Tom, slipping away from work to watch the sailors on the docks. He was Tom, here, travelling to a port in Spain, travelling to a different world, with Sebastian's eyes on him.

Their mouths found each other in the dark. The stars were bright and clear and cold above them, and Tom forgot about falling in.

He'd remember that, always, thought he didn't have much longer. The vanishing stars, the warmth of Sebastian's mouth, the sounds of the ship vanishing and being replaced by the noise of Sebastian's breath, by his heart thrumming beneath Tom's hand.

They were just two men on a boat, two young, quick men, full of longing. Later, they were just two bodies in the sea, drawing in lungfuls of cold water, raw and sharp in their lungs. Their hands were bound. They couldn't reach for each other. And even if they could, they wouldn't have, because dying is distracting, and they tried to breath until nothing was left.

Tom dreamed he was a mince pie, lying on a market stall. He dreamed he was a cherry, on the tree in the churchyard, being pecked by collared doves. He dreamed he was an anchovy, mixed in with eggs and served to a fine lady. He dreamed he was a fish, swimming swift and silent. He woke, and Sebastian was watching.

“Where are we?” he said, though he couldn't really speak any more. He didn't have a mouth or eyes any more, but still, he was here.

Sebastian understood. “On the bottom of this blue ocean,” he said, and if they had had eyes and feet they would have stood and stared at one another, but they had neither, yet still they surged into one another, and held each other closer than in any embrace.

Then they were Tom and Sebastian, cold and wrapped in one another, on the ocean floor, learning to walk underwater. Then they were Tom and Sebastian, two trees in an orange grove in the Algarve. Then they were Tom and Sebastian, two ropes in the rigging of a tall ship. They were everywhere, like the sea is everywhere when you are on a ship, and they were also just Tom and Sebastian.


End file.
